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WARM AND DRY conditions will continue to gradually settle in today with weakening north winds along the coast. Heat will peak early this week with above average temperatures pushing out even along the coast. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Happy autumnal equinox (aka fall 1st day of fall) at 5:43am this morning! Another foggy start & 53F this Sunday morning on the coast. After the fog clears out we should have several days of sunshine ahead to start the new week. The fog will return soon enough I'm sure.
AV ATHLETICS: Panther Ninth Grader Nicholas Espinoza finished Anderson Valley's first ever cross country race placing 14th out of 57 runners.
MUSHROOM HALLUCINATIONS
On Wednesday, September 18, 2024 at about 8:30 P.M., Mendocino County Sheriff's Office deputies were dispatched to a report of a male being held at gunpoint, by his girlfriend, in the 13000 block of Mountain House Road in Hopland.
Deputies arrived on scene and contacted the male who identified himself as Michael Giles. Giles told deputies while driving into Mendocino County, his girlfriend became paranoid and said they were being followed. Giles said his girlfriend shined a flashlight at him from behind, and he believed she was pointing a pistol at him. Giles never actually saw a pistol, but feared for his safety and pulled over. Giles was able to walk away from his vehicle and contacted law enforcement for assistance.
While speaking with Giles, he gave deputies permission to look inside his converted school bus for the pistol. While looking for the firearm, deputies located a large quantity of psilocybin mushrooms packaged in mylar bags. Deputies also located unpackaged psilocybin mushrooms, scales, and additional unused mylar bags.
In total, deputies seized about 700 grams (1.54 pounds) of psilocybin mushrooms.
At the conclusion of their investigation, deputies determined there was no pistol nor was a pistol ever pointed at Giles.
Giles was ultimately arrested for Possession of a Controlled Substance for Sales and Transportation of a Controlled Substance for Sales.
Giles was ultimately transported the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $100,000 bail.
THIRD DISTRICT SUPERVISOR REPORT
by John Haschak
The Board (of Supervisors) agreed with my proposal to uphold the original intent of the cannabis ordinance, which is limiting a parcel to 10,000 sq. ft. of mature plants.
The controversy was generated by someone asking county staff why there couldn’t be two permits per parcel resulting in doubling the cultivation size. County Counsel’s office said there was no restriction in the ordinance language. Since this was a legal decision, I brought the question to the board so that the board could make the policy decision. I am pleased that the board unanimously agreed that the original intent will be maintained.
In the final vote for the supervisorial raises, I voted no. Since we do have a structural deficit at this time because we used onetime-only money to balance the budget, I proposed that we wait on our increase until we have a balanced budget without using onetime-only money. The vote was 3-2 in favor of implementing it now.
The county finances are becoming clearer. There have been six audits in the last year. In the fiscal year 21-22 there were four audit findings. In 22-23, there were none. We are looking to close the books on fiscal year 23-24 in the next couple of months.
The groundbreaking for the Psychiatric Hospital Facility in South Ukiah was on Aug. 21. The funding comes from the Measure B tax. Former Sheriff Tom Allman, who was instrumental in the passage of Measure B, spoke about the need for this service in our county instead of transporting patients in crisis to far off locations.
Originally budgeted at $19.5 million, I was expecting with inflation for it to cost $22 million or so by the time it is finished. Instead, the county received a grant for $9.6 million and the construction bid came in at $13.5 million.
This means that there will be more Measure B money for drug and alcohol treatment and other needed programs, such as the mobile crisis outreach unit which is currently operational 24/7.
Planning and Building Services brought forward amendments to the inland zoning ordinance. Changes included revisions to accessory dwelling units and tiny homes, change minor use permits to administrative permits, and adopt new streamlined requirements for off-street parking.
Allowing low intensity camping (a very limited number of campsites as an auxiliary use) and prohibiting digital billboard advertising were referred to the Planning Commission.
Congratulations to the Round Valley Library! It was recognized as the “Best Small Library in America” by Library Journal. The library is the center of so many community activities including but not limited to forums, seed library, radio station, debates, movies, and educational activities for kids and adults.
One key to the recognition was the work the library does in regard to resiliency and emergencies. It is a safe place, cooling center, information and awareness clearinghouse, and more.
The library is certainly a collaboration between the county, Friends of the Library, and community.
There will be a Talk with the Supervisor Thursday, Sept. 26 at 10 a.m. at Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. I am available by email haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or phone 707-972-4214.
UPDATE: We were awarded the first phase of the FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant for fuel reduction, vegetation management, and home-hardening in Brooktrails. County staff has been diligent in submitting a successful application. This will provide $3.5 million in initial planning for community safety. We are hopeful that subsequent phases will provide up to $46 million more in additional funding.
CITY TAX SHARING & ANNEXATION
by Dick Selzer
I recently spent some time with the Ukiah city manager, Sage Sangiacomo, and a city councilmember, Doug Crane, to learn more about a proposed tax sharing and annexation agreement between the city of Ukiah and Mendocino County.
Based on the agreement, ultimately, the new city limits could more than double the city’s current footprint. City limits could extend as far north as the Forks, south almost all the way to Boonville Road, and east to incorporate the subdivisions of El Dorado and Vichy Estates.
The details of the agreement are not easy to understand; it’s 17 pages of government-speak. But, the gist of it is that during the next several years, the city of Ukiah will annex land adjacent to its current borders and begin providing services such as utilities, law enforcement, and infrastructure in return for tax revenue; specifically, sales tax, property tax, and transient occupancy tax (TOT). Each incorporated city has its own agreement with the county.
Why this? Why now? Frankly, this feels like a Hail Mary pass by the county to offload some expenses while maintaining short-term revenue. The county is in dire financial straits (it’s virtually bankrupt), so it must do something. The current draft of the Ukiah agreement outlines a phased approach for revenue sharing whereby the county hands over the responsibility of providing services to the city before it lets go of all the accompanying revenue.
For the first year, the county keeps all the tax revenue. Then the percentage of revenue it receives drops each year by either 6.7% or 20% depending on the type of tax. After five years or so, the city receives the lion’s share of the revenue, as it should since it will provide all the services. I asked Sage and Doug to provide specific dollar figures, but they didn’t have them yet. To be fair, although revenue numbers are somewhat easy to calculate, the multi-year cost of providing services is not.
The tax sharing part of the agreement will only go into effect when specific property is annexed, which is scheduled to occur in phases. And, the city cannot annex high-revenue areas without also annexing high-expense areas. For example, if the city annexes the Raley’s Shopping Center that produces significant sales tax and property tax revenue, then it must also annex a low-income-producing property such as the Fir Crest Apartments south of town, an area that doesn’t generate much tax income but does require services such as utilities, police and fire protection, and more.
The city and county have laid out a grid covering most of the Ukiah Valley, tying high-revenue and low-revenue areas together. So, if the city wants Area A, then it must also take Area B to keep things balanced.
The Mendocino Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) must approve all annexations. LAFCo was created by state law in 1963 to help local agencies oversee jurisdictional boundary changes. All California counties have a LAFCo Commission.
The city hasn’t had any significant annexations for about 50 years. The prior annexations predate Raleys, the Fir Crest apartments, the Oak Manor subdivision, and the Vineyard View subdivision. Clearly, it is time to expand our city limits, and having a tax sharing agreement assures that when the city annexes property, the county doesn’t lose so much revenue that it can no longer function.
This is why the agreement calls for taxes to be shared in annexed areas. The vast majority of taxes will rightly go to the city to pay for streets, law enforcement, utilities, etc., but some of the revenue will still go to the county.
I have two significant concerns about the way the city and county are proceeding: one is increased building regulation; the other is making sure there’s financial balance between city and county governments.
In a recent letter to The Ukiah Daily Journal, former Ukiah Mayor Mari Rodin lauded new regulations that would come with the annexation agreement, requiring developers to include curbs, gutters, and sidewalks as part of their projects. Those things are nice, but by shifting the entire cost of these amenities to developers, we’ll either see an increase in housing prices or less development — neither of which is good for Ukiahans.
Also, the county is giving up a lot of revenue. I understand they are also giving up the cost of providing services, but there’s been no analysis that can definitively compare the revenue generated versus the expense of annexed areas. This is a permanent agreement and it’s impossible to know what things will look like in 20 years.
My advice? Keep paying attention. The city and county will have many discussions in the coming months and years, and I expect, many public forums where city managers, county administrators, and elected officials from both sides will make better decisions if members of the public ask a lot questions starting with the phrase, “What if…?”
If you have questions about property management or real estate, please contact me at rselzer@selzerrealty.com or call (707) 462-4000. If you have an idea for a future column, share it with me and if I use it, I’ll send you a $25 gift certificate to Schat’s Bakery.
(Dick Selzer is a real estate broker who has been in the business for more than 45 years. The opinions expressed here are his and do not necessarily represent his affiliated organizations.)
THE FORT BRAGG CARE RESPONSE MODEL, COUNTY-WIDE, A DIALOGUE
Barbara Ortega (Fort Bragg)
I was wondering if the Sheriff had anything more to say about Fort Bragg shifting homeless folks out of town. I live just outside town, would like to know exactly what he meant. It seems like a fairly serious allegation, that’s not part of the model. Do they just tell them to move along if they’re not local? I know where those folks end up, in the woods at the end of my street.
Bernie Norvell:
Good morning. we absolutely do not move them along and I don’t feel that is what the Sheriff meant. The hardcore cases that don’t want to follow our plan eventually move out of the city. Out of the city by definition means the county. Six months into our program I wrote a letter to all of the council members and supervisors in the county stating this very thing will happen and offered them the opportunity to get on board. Now here we are. We recently applied for a grant with the sheriff and just got word that our grant application was successful. What does this mean? The city of Fort Bragg will expand its CRU services from Westport to Mendocino in partnership with the Sheriff’s office. We will be supplying the CRU member, and they will provide the deputy. Hope this helps.
Barbara Ortega:
Thanks Bernie, it does help. I think Fort Bragg is doing a great job and I’m glad you don’t think that was the intent of his statement. I didn’t hear it and just felt like it was kind of a slap. Great news about the grant! … That approach seems pragmatic to me. I’m still learning about the whole Continuum of Care apparatus and it seems like some shaking up is overdue.
Adam Gaska:
The CRU Model we proposed for countywide adoption makes the program consistent throughout the County.
It’s not about criminalizing homelessness or poverty . It’s about not allowing people’s self harm to extend out and harm the community. No one has the right to harm others through their behavior. I consider pooping in creeks, publicly using drugs, strewing needles, shoplifting and general vagrancy harmful to the community. Being addicted to drugs or mentally ill is not justification and the behaviors shouldn’t be tolerated.
The CRU program isn’t just about sending the three outreach workers to hold hands with people and support them into accessing services. It also includes increased enforcement of laws that already exist. It means not tolerating people being a public nuisance.
I have been having a lot of conversations with people in our community. Most support being more insistent on people taking advantage of the service and treatment options available. They support increased consequences for people being a public nuisance. Most believe that the number one factor in why people are homeless is drug addiction.
We also need to build more affordable housing. There just isn’t enough. The 170 units slated to be built on the south end of Ukiah is a drop in the bucket and not within reach for most people. Most can’t afford a $500,000 house with a $3000/month mortgage. We need apartments, small condos, townhouses.
D. Yokum:
Fort Bragg has a very good program! They concentrate on long term solutions! NOT DUMPING! The success of FB program is based on reconnecting, (by agreement) those who have families and loved ones who care, and want to help . Fortunately not all programs are “dump and run”. It just takes a little more effort then the “out of sight out of mind “ most cities favor! Spending all the homeless money to pay for someone to sit by a phone to buy a one way bus ticket. (Hoping they come back for job security)
ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: List of Events
A READER WRITES: Supervisor Mulheren’s silly pic of the organizational chart for the Great Redwood Trail that you posted yesterday shows what a nice bunch of jobs for Democrats are being created. Of course, that was the point all along, I suppose, since there never will be a “great” trail, just a few little “not so great trails,” here and there in the urban areas. These Democrats make Mitch Stogner’s old North Coast Railroad Authority gang look like pikers. Stogner and crew never had anywhere near this many do-nothing jobs. Nor did they waste as much money on contractors. At least the never-gonna-happen NCRA railroad was a cleverly disguised scheme by the old scammer Doug Bosco which you had to admire for its complexity. This new bunch isn’t even clever or deceptive. They just roll their never-gonna-happen scam right out in front of us, knowing that large swaths of the northcoast are gullible enough to swallow it whole. I wonder if we’ll discover a hidden Bosco angle to the Great Redwood Scam someday. It wouldn’t surprise me, but Bosco might be too smart to involve himself in this 21st Century version of his original scam.
THE RIGHT TO READ BANNED BOOKS
Mendocino County Library invites the community to celebrate the freedom to read this September. Since 1982 Banned Books Week has united librarians, teachers, authors, publishers, and the community to defend the freedom to read and unfettered access to information. The right to read is a shared value, and the unprecedented increase in calls to ban books threatens those rights and freedoms.
The number of unique titles targeted by challenges in 2023 was 65% higher at 4240 titles than in 2022 at 2571 titles. Book challenges threaten the American education system and our youth by depriving them of the ability to see themselves represented in library materials and educational curriculums. Data proves that when children have access to recreational and educational materials in which they are represented they are more likely to succeed in school, thrive in their community, and have more empathy for others.
“We all have the right to read. Mendocino County’s librarians work hard to maintain a collection that represents everyone in our communities,” stated County Librarian Mellisa Hannum. “Reading is critical to exercising our democratic freedoms. Books are also important for teaching kids and teens how to process complex issues, learn about how others see the world, and help them to feel less alone.”
Banned Books Week is a celebration of our right to read and of open access to educational and recreational reading materials as well as a reminder of the ongoing challenges faced by literature and other published works. Banned Books Week gives everyone a chance to reflect on and raise their voice in support of the importance of free expression and diverse voices in our libraries, schools, and institutions.
For more information, please view http://www.mendolibrary.org or contact the Mendocino County Library at 234-2873.
UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK
Tex is a delightful young dog, happy to meet and greet new people, and appears friendly with other dogs. Tex loves going on long walks, but he needs some brushing-up on his leash manners, as he tends to pull. Tex knows sit and has good indoor manners. This dude is ready, willing and eager to learn—he’s just waiting to find that special someone to be his new BFF. Tex is a German Shepherd Dog X, 2 years old and 55 healthy and handsome pounds.
To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com. Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.
We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter
For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.
HOW THE DEMOCRATS CAPTURED THE NORTHCOAST, FOREVER
by Bruce Anderson
A JAUNDICED EYE looks back: In the pivotal year of 1967, the Summer of Love having gone to speed, STDs, Nixon, and the endless war on Vietnam, hippies and hip-symps headed north, through the rainbow tunnel, north through the suburban terrors of Santa Rosa, farther north yet to plunge through the Green Curtain at Cloverdale, and on north to the vast, sparsely populated Northcoast, headed vaguely back to the land, and the farther north we went the cheaper the land got, but when we got back to the land there was no way to earn a living on our logged over, remote acreages other than remittance farming at places like the Rainbow commune above Philo, a site Timothy Leary tellingly described as “one of the most successful, upscale hippie communes in the country.” (The rainbow property is now a vineyard.) Upscale is the keyword here. Read upscale in this case as insolence and a immutable sense of privilege and, in a pinch, a government check or an emergency check from despised Mom and Dad.
LESS UP-MARKET HIPPIES, the ones who preferred not to risk jail growing marijuna and the annual infestation of pot bandits, dusted off their diplomas and came down out of the hills to get themselves public jobs which, in the perennially tight job market of Mendocino County, are the only jobs that pay college people the kind of money college people think they deserve.
THE HIPPIES were re-entering a society they'd spent their youths yearning to escape. But being middle-class and college-certified and civic-minded, the hippies elected other hippies, or hip-symps like “anti-nuke” Doug Bosco, to public offices high and low, from school boards to supervisors to superior court judges, and before the “rednecks” and the “straights” (anybody who believed in Little League and orderly households) could mobilize their side’s vote, a majority of Mendocino County's public jobs were occupied by the love generation.
AND PUBLIC POLICY in Mendocino County grew crueler by the year, always in direct proportion to the re-entry of the formerly estranged. For the then-livable wage of $30,000 a year, a graduate of the big naked solstice piles would put the programmatic boots to anybody a rung down the ladder. Pay an old hippie with a law degree a $200,000 a year with a package full of fringes and he'll blandly process the proles into prison.
CONGRESSMAN MIKE THOMPSON, mercifully now moved to another gerrymandered district to the east, picked up a Purple Heart in Vietnam. He said when he got home a hippie spit on him. The hippies, once removed, voted him into office and have kept him there ever since where Thompson, representing the wine industry full-time, has been a reliable vote for war and against the environment. (Not a single vet was spat upon; I refer you to the definitive book on that myth subject by Jerry Lembcke, “The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam.”) Republicans don't bother to run anyone against the “liberals” of the Northcoast because Democrats, talking left, voting right, are merely Republican Lite, hence, for instance, the monstrous Dick Cheney’s no problemo signing on with the welcoming Democrats.
THE ELECTORAL BASE for career officeholders like the Democrats foist off on the Northcoast is largely composed of public employees, whose funding depends on Democrats at the state and federal level. The edu-bloc, proportionately large in Mendocino County, votes as one for Democrats. The Democrats send the edu-bloc lots of money while saying, “Gee, I wish I could send more for the kids but the Republicans spend it all on war, and I have to support our men and women in uniform so I have to vote for war, too.”
PEOPLE EMPLOYED at various levels of government, a third of all persons employed in Mendocino County, vote for Democrats because Democrats can be depended upon to make more government of the type that faithfully re-elects them. (Take a look at the laughable admin chart for the Great Redwood Trail, a looming jobs program for well connected Democrats, as was the railroad before it.)
WHAT THE DEMOCRATS have done on the Northcoast is create an old-fashioned political machine that claims Democrats are the “progressive” alternative to MAGA-ism, which is politically invisible on the Northcoast. Maybe they are in some places — San Francisco and some other cities elect people to city councils and even Congress who are genuinely progressive, er, well, kinda, sometimes — but not in Mendocino County. In Mendocino County, Democrats comprise a forever one-party monopoly.
CONGRESSMAN THOMPSON, the wine industry's main man in Washington, as is our alleged rep, Huffman, was instrumental in getting the ban on ozone-destroying methyl bromide delayed for five more years because that's what the industrial wine industry demanded at the time. (Thompson, natch, owns a vineyard and winery.) Pumped down into the earth to depths of 12 feet, methyl bromide sterilizes the earth for new vines. Immigrant Mexicans, upon whom the entire industry depends for their hard work at starvation wages, applied not only this particular poison to the earth, but year round poisons that kill weeds and insects, this annual chemical stew runs off into the Navarro River, now fish-free The poisons get into the water, and everything around these vineyards is soon dead. (When’s the last time you saw a frog anywhere near a vineyard?) The wine industry, thanks to Democrats, is basically exempt from industrial-environmental safety standards, and the industry’s use of pesticides and herbicides is almost as loosely supervised because Mendocino County is short on inspectors, and all the poisoners have to do is report what poisons they apply.
THE LATE MICHEL SALGUES, a PhD in chemistry, and the former boss at the huge, French-owned Roederer Winery in Philo, was quite candid about the realities of wine making in Mendocino County. “Why do you think we're here?,” Salgues asked us. “We can do things here we cannot do in France because the wine industry in France, right down to labor practices, is heavily regulated.”
ONE SPRING MORNING back in the early 1970s, as clusters of hippie kids waited on Greenwood Road for the big yellow buses to carry them to classrooms as dull as the ones their alienated parents had fled for California's backwoods, a Louisiana-Pacific helicopter, spraying the freshly logged hills with herbicides to prevent non-commercial re-vegetation, heedlessly doused the little Rainbows and Karmas as they stood beside the road near where the logging had been done. The hippies mobilized and quickly passed a county-wide ban on the aerial application of herbicides. Within months, state Democrats, including the Northcoast contingent, led by mega-liberal Willie Brown, their pockets stuffed with corporate ag cash, passed legislation that prohibited individual counties from regulating herbicides and pesticides; only the state could decide who could poison the kids and who couldn't and what regs would apply.
AMONG THE RE-ENTRY HIPPIES who dominate Mendocino County's public institutions are too many lawyers. Law degreed hippies were quick to note that Mendocino County's far-flung communities were served by one-day-a-week justice courts whose judges were “lay persons,” i.e., non-lawyers. Nobody in Mendocino County was unhappy with the lay judges in any organized sense of unhappiness. Lay judges were a non-issue. People living in the county's outback liked their community judges because the judges lived in the community, knew the community, and were trusted by the community to do justice for the non-felonies they dealt with.
BUT THE HIPPIE LAWYERS saw big pay days going to waste. They began to say, “The quality of justice is likely to be inferior if the dispensing person it isn't properly trained. We really should have lawyers sitting as judges in these justice courts.” The law was duly changed, and the lay judges, who had sat in judgment of their friends and neighbors for a hundred years without complaint, were gone.
THERE HAS INDEED been a dramatic change in the quality of justice in Mendocino County. Not only are more people than ever before going to jail for longer periods of time, and where the “lay” judges cost taxpayers $300 a month for a court that convened one day a week, thus sparing plaintiffs and defendants alike the long trip to Ukiah, the law degreed justice court judges now made upwards of $200,000 a year plus fringes for them and their families, a rate of pay and a benefits package few defendants or local citizens enjoy.
THE QUALITY OF JUSTICE now that the boys and girls with the credentials wear the black robes? If you can afford a well-connected lawyer you get off; if you can't afford a well-connected lawyer you go to the state pen, and the people sending you there, from judges to most of the lawyers involved, the probation officers to the psychologists to the social workers who evaluate you for the judges, are all NPR listeners, Democrats, Clintonians, groovies, joyous Kamalas.
AND NOTHING will ever change for the better for the people on the receiving end of the Hip-Autocracy that has had Mendocino County in a lavender chokehold ever since Jim Jones, a liberal, a Democrat, and a committed doper.
YES, CALIFORNIA DOES HAVE AN ACCENT — YOU JUST DON’T REALIZE IT
by Eva Morreale
…Wes Smoot has a jolly country jangle in his voice not unlike actors Jeff Bridges and Sam Elliot. He punctuates his sentences with phrasing like, “by golly” and “real good.” And even though we’re on the phone 490 miles away from each other I feel like I’m gently rocking away on his front porch in Boonville, California.
Boonville is a hyper-rural (population of 1,018 rural) but stunning town in Mendocino County, dotted with tasting rooms and vineyards. But under a century ago, it was one of many California towns that became flooded with immigrants fleeing from Dust Bowl conditions in the American Midwest and Southeast.
Born into the poverty of early 1930s America, Smoot was adopted by aunts and uncles who hailed from, you guessed it, Oklahoma and Kansas. He went on to spend time in the military, and ended up marrying and working in timber back in Boonville. At 92, he sounds bright, sturdy, and joyful through the phone. He’s one of what he believes to be “10 or so” of the last Bootling speakers.…
CHUCK ROSS:
I wanted to give a shout out to R. D. Beacon for preserving part of our history.
In 1962 when my mother sold our property in Elk which included the old lumber company office and its vault, my damn fool stepfather loaded all the old company records, hundreds of large heavy ledgers and took them to the dump. The dump was burned once or twice a week. But the young Bobby Beacon saw that happening and he took his truck down there and saved them. He took them home and put them indoors and they survived. The storage of these documents did, for various reasons, become less-than-optimal but they survived. Then a couple of years ago he asked me to take on the task of securing the things he owned that were of historical value. I have been doing this on my many visits down to the coast over the past couple of years.
Last time down, I removed the recently-discovered trove of documents from a rusted-out shipping container and we moved them to warm, dry storage in Ukiah. So I also give a big thanks to my nephew, Ross ThePirate Christiansen for the space. Conserving these ledgers proved to be beyond the capability of the HSMC and I have taken on the task of scanning them into electronic storage. I am presently three volumes into what will be a years-long project.
But it is a fascinating project and I relish it. So here, for a little peek into it, is the first page of the "index to ledger #4 listing all the L.E. White Lumber Co. employees.
The first page lists all the Chinese because, I suspect, the wage scale was different and the book keeper probably did not understand Chinese naming convention.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, September 21, 2024
JAIME DIAZ, 59, Fort Bragg. DUI.
CHRISTIAN CUTTS, 37, Ukiah. Probation revocation.
SEAN FLINTON, 43, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)
DANIELLE FONTAINE, 40, Mendocino. Domestic violence court order violation.
ALDAR FRAGOSO, 31, Redwood Valley. Vandalism tools, resisting.
JUAN GUERRA-PEREZ, 46, Boonville. DUI.
NICHOLAS HALVORSEN, 52, Fort Bragg. Shoplifting, trespassing, under influence, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)
AMBER LEZAMA, 38, Clearlake/Willits. Domestic abuse.
JOSE PALAFOX-CERVANTES, 33, Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, obtaining vehicle by theft or extortion, burglary tools, paraphernalia.
BRIAN SCHAT JR., 30, Ukiah. DUI.
ROBYN THOMPSON, 59, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.
KUA TURNER, 53, Fort Bragg. Brandishing, criminal threats, resisting, probation revocation.
ERIC WRIGHT, 29, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.
SAVE COMMUNITY CLINICS
Editor,
Regarding this editorial from the Chronicle, “Endorsement: Prop 35 is a complicated maze of a measure that doesn’t belong on the ballot." In fact, Proposition 35 is essential for making sure community clinics like our 12 members, which serve over 110,000 patients per year, can keep their doors open, hire more staff and care for the Medi-Cal patients who overwhelmingly rely on clinics for health care.
Community clinics see more than one-third of the state’s Medi-Cal patients, but for 15 years, the state has redirected funding toward non-health-care purposes, leaving providers and clinics who treat the most vulnerable patients struggling.
Prop 35 provides a solution by funding primary and specialty care, along with dental, mental health and emergency care. For too long, we’ve let those who need care the most wait months for appointments or be forced to drive hours for care — just because they have Medi-Cal.
It’s time that we do better for patients. Vote yes on Prop 35.
Johanna Liu, president and CEO, San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium
San Francisco
ANYTHING GOES
Editor:
Is it not as morally reprehensible to put explosives in pagers that can be exploded by remote control so as to maim and kill civilians as it is to plant land mines in order to maim and kill civilians? What is happening to the morality of Homo Sapiens?
J.D. Thompson
Santa Rosa
BUM LIKE ME
by Doug Holland
I've never been homeless, but I've been poor, lived in shitesque neighborhoods, and over the years I've known several homeless folks well enough to say good morning and have a conversation. In my experience, they're ordinary folks with one rotten turn of luck, or a weakness for the bottle, or the needle. There but for the grace of God, as the cliché goes… But I don't believe in God, and we never give the homeless any grace.
Over the past couple of years, I sorta got to know one homeless guy, who hung around near my favorite diner. His name was Bucky, though I never knew it until after he'd died. They found him in the bushes. Natural causes, the cops said.
I've been thinking about Bucky, about the hellish lives of people who have nowhere to sleep, no fridge, no chair. America has millions of homeless people, ignored by most folks and despised by the rest.
Me, I've got empathy coming out the blowhole. Sometimes I write about homelessness, worry about it, or hand a homeless guy some cash. But I don't know jack crap about actually being homeless, so a crazy thought occurred to me: Give homelessness a very, very slight try.
That's what I did, and I'm going to tell you about it. But first, a major disclaimer: It was nothing like the real thing. It was homeless tourism. If something had gone wrong, there's an address I could've returned to — a huge advantage over anyone who's on the street by circumstance, not by choice.
And unlike the real thing, it was humiliation-free, because I wouldn't need to beg, wouldn't have to eat at a shelter, and endure a sermon. My wallet was with me, and inside it, my bus pass, and debit card.
One night seemed too easy, and three nights without a shower would be sticky, so my plan was to spend two nights without a bed. But unlike genuine homelessness, I got to choose when it would start and stop, so I selected a few late-summer days when the forecast was free from rain but also not too hot: Wednesday and Thursday, September 11th and 12th, 2024.
As the sun came up on Wednesday morning, I shoved a blanket into my backpack, along with a light jacket, my mace of course, and a few beef jerky bars. I left my laptop and cellphone at home — you don't often seen homeless people scrolling and surfing.
I rode a bus to West Seattle's Lincoln Park, a green space so huge that even when it's crowded it's easy to find an area that's not. Nobody bothered me there, and I read a book until it bored me, then read another book to the end. I'm a reader.
When hunger said hello, I bused to Walgreen’s for the same poor man's menu I’d eaten when I was desperate, decades ago — the cheapest generic bread, and fake margarine in a tub. At a tiny park, I ate half a loaf of my bread-and-spread, which was perfectly bearable, because I knew it wasn't what I'd be eating again and again and again. A hot meal was at most two days away.
Then I bused to the West Seattle Library, and spent the afternoon reading magazines. (Yeah, there are still magazines!) The library has internet access, but it felt like that would be cheating, so I stayed with the printed page.
As sunset approached, it brought my biggest worry in all this — nightfall. I've heard too many accounts of bums attacked, beaten, even killed while they were sleeping, so in planning this stupidity, I’d explored the park closest to my home. At its western corner, I’d found a way under and then behind some shrubbery, where my hope was, I'd be invisible to “normal people,” and especially to the police.
I bused there from the library, walked across the small park, and when nobody was looking I hunched myself down, and crawled to my pre-selected hiding spot. I laid on the dirt and wrapped my blanket around me, put my head on my backpack as a pillow, and waited a long, uncomfortable time for sleep to come.
The earth was hard on my hips and butt, and I slept shitty and intermittently, waking up every few hours to pee in the bushes, and worry.
About what? Well, I'm basically a boring man. Except for some camping trips long ago, every night of my life I've slept safely behind locked doors. But you can't lock a bush.
The sound of voices woke me, but it was only a young couple with a flashlight, walking and occasionally kissing. From the inanity of their conversation, I'm guessing they were teenagers. No friskiness, though. It was as wholesome as a Jimmy Stewart movie.
I was at that park for about nine hours overnight, and may have gotten two hours of sleep. That’s just a guess, since I don't wear a watch and checking the time on my phone would’ve lit up my hiding space.
Midway through the night, I put on my jacket for warmth.
Some time later, something large crawled across my neck. Instantly, instinctively, even before waking up, I slapped at it, but it was moving at about 30 mph and got away. There was almost enough light to see, and I think it was the largest spider in recorded history, not counting sci-fi movies. I hate spiders like Indiana Jones hates snakes, so I was awake for a long while after that, and a nightmare of spiders was waiting when I fell asleep.
Much later, at the height of blackness in the darkened park, men’s voices woke me, from a trail about 20 feet away. They were probably harmless, likely drunk, but still I froze like a snapshot.
Even after their sounds faded, I couldn't stop thinking how dumb it was, what I was doing. I don't know if I've ever felt as vulnerable. Sure, I had my mace within quick reach, but mace ain't a gun, and anything could’ve happened.
Walls are a safety you never think about, until the walls aren't there.
When the sun began rising on my second day of fake homelessness, I packed my blanket back in my pack, and crawled out of the bushes, wiping dirt and bugs off me.
And cripes, I was achy. I’m 20 years older than the last time I’d been camping, and this time there’d been no tent, and no soft sleeping bag. Only dirt and rocks had been under me, and apparently a billion bugs.
All day, I walked slower and more painfully than the first day, as the aches from the night hung on stubbornly. Some of my morning was at Lincoln Park again, where I squished a few bugs from the night that were still crawling up my back and inside my pant-legs.
The book I'd borrowed from the library wasn't good enough to keep my mind off the ouches and itches, and I was tired. And when I wasn't thinking of bugs and aches and sleep, I was still thinking about the night before. I'd been really quite scared for a few minutes, wishing for walls.
Of course, people on the street never have walls to retreat behind. To anyone actually homeless, not play-acting like me, five minutes frozen in fear would’ve been five minutes of ordinary.
Then I bused to the library in the International District, where I returned the lousy book I'd checked out in West Seattle the day before, and read another book for long enough to be sure it didn't suck, then checked it out.
Also went online for a while. Hey, real bums use the library computers to go online, so an artificial bum can do it too.
I fell asleep on the internet, and a security guard tapped my shoulder. He didn't order me to leave, and even smiled politely, but leave I did.
After that I took a few long bus rides, each time falling into and out of sleep until Metro’s electronic voice announced, “This is the last stop. All passengers should deboard at this time.”
In the back of a mostly-empty bus to Bellevue, I ate the second half of my loaf of bread-and-spread, and fell again into a shallow sleep — exponentially better and less painful than sleeping under the shrubs, but not a fraction as nice as sleeping at home.
I was awakened by yet another tiny bug that had probably been riding me since the bushes the night before. The bugs were bugging me, and my back was still hurting, so I said to myself, Fuck this whole idea, and headed home.
Turning my key and walking in, I was no longer “homeless,” and it was great.
I swallowed six aspirin to beat the aches, ran a load of laundry to get the chiggers out of my clothes, took a long, warm shower, and settled into my recliner. The cat was happy to see me, and I was happy to be back. And I slept.
Grand total, I'd spent about 35 hours pretending to be homeless, not the two full days I'd intended. In that time, nobody hassled me, no cops threatened me, because even after a night rolling in dirt, I wasn't disheveled and stinky enough to look like a bum. And I'm overweight, which helped — in a security guard's eyes, a fat man probably can't be homeless.
I'd been curious, so what the hell, I did this crazy thing. My back still hurts, and something ate me real bad up around my neck, but nothing disastrous happened. Yet still, I wasn't tough enough to last even two nights.
(www.itsdougholland.com)
TOMMY WOODCOCK, a renowned trainer and horseman, had a special bond with his stallion Reckless, the top contender for the Melbourne Cup that year. Captured by former Age photographer Bruce Postle, the photo beautifully showcases the deep connection between man and horse.
As Postle described, "He looked at Reckless and Reckless looked at him and without a word his big stallion dropped down and put his head on Tommy's chest. He reached up and tickled him under the neck and the horse closed his eyes and that was it.
I took two pictures, that was it." Woodcock's skill and dedication were evident, as recalled by Ros Neave, who was impressed by his ability to lead multiple two-year-olds around the track with calm focus.
MEMO OF THE AIR: Your uncle from Zhprajdnyek.
Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-09-20) 8-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0610
Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.
Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:
Trussssst in me. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2016/09/two-handed-snake-sings-trust-in-me.html
Elbows off the control panel, Veena. You know that. Have you done your space-homework? Well, I don't care /what/ your friend Astrid's mother lets her do. You'll finish your homework or there'll be no zero-gravity sex carousel this Saturday for you, young lady. And don't you roll your eyes at me! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Yck0zkbAY
Medieval fire arrows. What they are and what they can do. (30 min.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNCU4WndtYk
And the Shriners. They're not just about the parade go-karts, though you could get that impression. They maintain children's hospitals where "children up to the age of 18 years, with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries and cleft lip and palate are eligible for admission and receive all care in a family centered environment at no charge." Funny little hats off to the Shriners. Also the Moose Lodge. "No man stands so tall as when he stoops to lift a child." https://www.messynessychic.com/2024/09/06/mostly-this-secret-masonic-order-just-wants-to-have-fun/
Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
The Parasailer is very, very lucky, he was not hurt and the folks in the boat got a once in a lifetime photo, Wow! Great Whites are showing up more and more in the Lower Keys, maybe they have always been here? With most of our visitors having smart phones we are getting some excellent photos that increase our understand of the Great White, where it roams, what he eats & how many are really here. Man-O-man that's a BIG shark! I think the Islands in rear of the photo are in the Harbor Key/Content Area. The Lower Keys , one of the most unique spots in the world.
Is This a Picture of a Shark Attacking a Parasailer?
by Dan Evon
A picture supposedly showing a shark jumping out of the water to attack a person parasailing is occasionally mistaken as genuine as it circulates on social media.
This is not a genuine photograph of a parasailer nearly being bitten by a large shark. This is a composite image of at least two separate photographs.
The image of the shark was taken from a photograph by David Jenkins for the Cater News Agency in 2013. The original photograph came from a series of images documenting a great white shark's attempt to catch a seal off the coast of South Africa. The image of the shark was then inserted into a second, unrelated photograph of a person parasailing.
Jenkins' photographs received some media attention when they were first published in 2013. One of the images was even featured on the cover of Time magazine's "The Year in Pictures" issue.…
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/parasailer-shark-attack-real
LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT
Hezbollah Retaliates With Missile Strikes Against Israel
For Middle Eastern Foes, Diplomacy Takes a Back Seat to Military Force
Israel’s military closed Al Jazeera’s office in the West Bank
Harris Cracked Down on Violence; Showed Leniency on Less Serious Crime
DONALD TRUMP AND HILLARY CLINTON COMBINE to move us several steps closer to Walter's prediction of the first drone assassination for a tweet. Plus, "The Blood of the Martyrs," by Stephen Vincent Benét [transcript]
Matt Taibbi: All right, welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.
Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.
Matt Taibbi: Walter, how are you doing?
Walter Kirn: I’m cold. And that’s because in Montana, where it gets winter after August is over, I have no heat. There was a transformer fire in my alley. If you’ve ever seen one of those, it’s when one of the transformers on the power lines catches fire and then sprays burning oil on everything. And the fire-
Matt Taibbi: Awesome.
Walter Kirn: Yeah. The fire department, bless their hearts, didn’t seem to be properly trained for the transformer fire, and they made the rookie mistake of spraying water on the transformer. As anyone who’s tried to put out a grease fire with water in their kitchen knows that only spreads it. So we had this disaster, and it was actually a few weeks ago. And the surge involved with the fire blew out the circuit boards on a lot of my appliances, but I didn’t know it blew out my furnace too until I tried to turn my furnace on in a little bit of a cold snap, the last few days, and-
Matt Taibbi: Oh, no.
Walter Kirn: Yeah, so now it’s very catch-as-catch-can around here, there are space heaters from the hardware store blowing on my legs, and in certain rooms. We’re hoping to get back to civilization soon, but...
Matt Taibbi: Oh, that’s good. Okay. All right. Yeah, you can’t be in Montana without heat. Well, not for long anyway.
Walter Kirn: No. No. I might not be here next week.
Matt Taibbi: You’re going to end up the center of Iceman II? Remember that movie where they found the guy underneath the Antarctica or wherever it was? Okay. So crazy weekend news. We did a last room on Monday and we were curious to see how the backlash would play out after attempted... Assassination attempt. Apparent assassination attempt.
Walter Kirn: It’s strange that they have backlash now to assassination attempts, but they do.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah, no, folks are angry about it, and no one was angrier about it than the White House Press Secretary. And maybe it’s the media person in me, but I thought this was a profoundly weird exchange that took place in the September 18th White House press briefing. And what we’re about to watch is an exchange between Karine Jean-Pierre and Peter Doocy of Fox News. But we’re going to actually start it a little earlier with a question from Danny Kemp of, I think it’s AFP is who he works for. And he’s asking something kind of... It’s an offhand follow-up question, but you can tell it bothers Jean-Pierre quite a bit, and I think that impacts what happens afterward. But here we go.…
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-september-01b
DONALD TRUMP'S RALLIES aren't cool. Like you, perhaps, I've watched them on TV, first as a supposed harbinger of the coming American fascist state, and then as a species of light comic relief while folding laundry. Generally speaking, I prefer loud guitars and 7th-inning home runs or simply sitting outside on the porch of my farmhouse and watching grass grow.
Where I give Trump points though, is for understanding his rallies as a form of entertainment. He does his best to give his audience what they came for. The endless attempts to use the story-making machinery to label Trump as a Hitler, or a Russian stooge, or an unrepentant, divisive racist who appeals only to the worst angels of our nature, mistake the source of his appeal. Trump is a thoroughly American character, part PT. Barnum, part scam artist from Mark Twain's ‘Huckleberry Finn’ or Herman Meville's ‘The Confidence Man,’ and part after-dinner raconteur, like Twain himself. He'll sell you a bridge over the Mississippi River, while flattering you that you are in on the joke, while his wiseguy timing would hold its own on any stage in Las Vegas in the gaudy heyday of the Rat Pack. Ba-Da-Bing!
Who would have thought that Donald Trump, of all people, would turn out to be the Demon Emperor. Who would have thought that by force of personality alone, Donald Trump could stand up against the most powerful thought-control machine that the combined talents of Google, Stanford, Harvard and the Democratic Party could devise, and that instead of folding, he would become President, then beat them at their own game, then lose, then nearly wind up in prison for trying to overthrow our democratic Constitutional order on the suspicion that he wuz robbed, then get up off the mat a second time, then take a bullet, and still come out swinging.
Story-wise, it's incredible stuff.
— David Samuels, ‘County Highway’
TEN TRUE THINGS REGARDING THE ELECTION & AMERICA
by Paul Street
I have no idea who is going to win the 2024 presidential election other than it will be either the open fascist Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump or the lethal imperialist and mass incarcerator Kamala “Don’t Come” Harris. I am aware that the “presidential election Nostradamus” who has correctly predicted 9 of the last 10 presidential elections, historian Allan Lichtman, has picked Harris (on the basis of his fascinating 13-factor formula). I hardly wish to bet against Lichtman, but the race is down to the wire. There is too much volatility and chance and there are too many balls in the air for me to feel strong about any prediction beyond Harris beating Trump in the national popular vote. October is certain to bring big “surprises” at home and/or abroad.
As most of this commentary’s readers should know, the United States doesn’t elect presidents on the basis of a national popular vote. Its absurd Electoral College effectively requires the Democratic candidate to beat their Republican opponent by 4 to 5 percent of that vote to keep or gain the White House. And the American first-past-the-270-Electors-post system essentially reduces the contest to a small handful of states: Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina (though there is some talk of Florida and even Iowa being in play this year).
To make matters worse, the Trumpist Republi-fascists have been recruiting and putting into place local election officials who will refuse to certify Democratic victories. They are undertaking a concerted voter intimidation program. They have passed state laws making voting more difficult for non-Republicans. They have exhaustively gamed out constitutional and extra-constitutional strategies to deny and cancel a Harris victory. And they have a now fully MAGA-tized Christian Fascist Supreme Court on their side to back them up at the highest level in their legal assaults on the election.
Two unsightly Trump victories seem possible:
+ A “clean” win: Donald “Kamala is a Communist” Trump wins the Electoral College “cleanly” (quote marks are required because of the right-wing vote shenanigans and voter suppression/intimidation that will ensue) but loses the national popular vote as in 2016.
+ Victory via the Trump High Court: Donald “Retribution” Trump losing both the popular vote and slaveowners’ Electoral College but successfully challenging the outcome, getting it reversed on spurious grounds by a Supreme Court that is predisposed to grant Trump a second presidency. (Allan Lichtman actually predicted the 2000 election correctly but for the intervention of a right-wing Supreme Court in Bush v Gore). The Court will claim to be acting to stave off civil war as Trump’s more violent Amerikaner backers spill blood in the streets – including that of liberal and left activists – and face (legitimate repression from the Biden administration and from Democratic Party-controlled and local state governments.
But who knows? Shit is “out da box now.” I hope Lichtman is right about the outcome. Noam Chomsky correctly labelled Trump “the most dangerous criminal in human history” even right before Trump had a chance to spread the Covid-19 virus around the country, killing hundreds of thousands of US - Americas – maybe Trump’s most forgotten and biggest crime among a long list of crimes. And this time there’s no attempt by Donald “Clear Out the Marxist Vermin” Trump and his team to hide the fascist agenda. The whole formerly republican Republican Party is on board with their Hitler-channeling Dear Leader along with an army of authoritarian, racist, nativist, and sexist policy strategists ready to implement a comprehensive blood and soil Gilead agenda (Project 2025) for the patriarchal and Christian white nationalist takeover and makeover of US government and society.
As Donald “I Only Rape Women I Find Attractive” Trump likes to say, we’ll see what happens.
Beneath the electoral uncertainty, Ten things seem unambiguously true to me:
+1. Even if Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump doesn’t prevail in the 2024-25 election, it is chilling evidence of what an atrocious and dangerous nightmare state the United States of Amerika is (and has been for most of its history in my opinion) that this malignant fascist monster is (a) not behind bars and (b) actually has a good shot at bringing his hate-mongering horror show back to the most powerful and dangerous office on earth. More than 75 million of the US “City on a Hill’s” adults are ready to vote to give a second presidency to the lethal Republi-Nazi maniac Donald “Haitians are Eating Our Dogs and Cats” Trump. Even if the Malignant One loses, this is a terrifying sign of abject and disastrous societal failure.
+2. Evin if Harris wins, she will be unable to do much to make her and her party seem like progressive alternatives to the Republi-Nazi party – assuming she even cares to try to do that – under the US slaveowners’ Minority Rule regime. The Amerikaner fascists now have the lifetime-appointed Supreme Court and at least half the nation’s absurdly powerful state governments. The will regain majority agenda-setting control of the absurdly powerful and malapportioned (and filibusted) US Senate thanks to an election line up that puts far more Democratic than Republican incumbent Senators up for re-election. Even if the Democrats maintain a slim margin in the Senate (very unlikely), Harris’s promises to pass various forms of legislation favored by most US Americans will not be fulfilled. Her attempts at reform won’t get past the Senate filibuster (which requires 60 of a 100 votes for a bill to be heard) and the God-like Supreme Court. A center-right Dem who speaks the insipid Clinton-Obama neoliberal language of “getting things done on a bipartisan basis,” Harris as president will exhibit Vichy-like accommodation to the far-right that is lethally enabled and encouraged by the Minority Rule structure of US governance and elections.
+3. If her vice presidency and presidential campaign are any indication, Harris will continue three disastrous US imperial policies under “Genocide Joe” Biden: (i) “iron clad” US support – funding, equipping, and protecting – of the Judeo-fascist occupation and apartheid state of Israel’s genocidal war of ethnic cleansing of Gaza and its related escalated wars on the West Bank and Lebanon; (ii) the reckless US provocation of the nuclear superpower Russia through the funding, equipping, and protecting of a mass murderous meatgrinder of a horrific imperialist proxy war in Ukraine; (iii) the reckless military encirclement and provocation of the United States main rival superpower China.
+4. Consistent with its emergence as a fascist party, the Republifascists no longer accept defeat in elections. An initial Harris victory will set off a firestorm of Republi-fascist rage seeking to reverse the outcome “by all means necessary.” The means will involve political violence in various forms including paramilitary attacks, collaboration between fascist police and militias, and lone-wolf attacks in a nation saturated with guns including 15-18 million military assault rifles.
+5. Considerable and possible major civil conflagration will follow the election regardless of its outcome. The most obvious scenarios for mass conflict involve a Harris victory, which will spark right-wing violence far beyond the immediate aftermath – likely for the entire length of her time in office. A Donald “Dictator for a Day” Trump victory – especially one achieved through fascist bullying and the intervention of the high Trump Court – also comes with a strong likelihood of violence: the promised Trumpist repression of those who rise up in understandable refusal to accept a second Trump administration. That repression will combine the violence of state gendarmes (perhaps including the US military, as promised by Herr Trump) with the actions of far-right extra-state actors. Then comes Trump’s promised enlistment of the military in a giant mass deportation program and a draconian campaign to “end urban crime in one day.” (It may be worth noting here that fascism has never come into power in a nation as remotely saturated with firearms and literal military weapons as the USA in 2024-25.)
+6. You can’t defeat fascism when you refuse to call it out for what it is because – like the preponderant majority of top Democrats and liberal media authorities – you are either too ignorant or stupid to understand it or too frightened to say “the F-word” (fascism) so because you are afraid of what you might stir up by telling the truth about how supposedly exceptionally free and democratic capitalist America generated a giant fascist movement that took over one of the nation’s two dominant political parties with no small enablement and assistance from the nation’s other dominant and supposedly liberal political party.
+7. You can’t even begin to send the new Amerikaner fascism into the dustbin of history (where it belongs by any decent moral calculation) by squeaking by the Electoral College with a faux-progressive neoliberal/capitalist-imperialist president who is gridlocked by underlying bourgeois class rule and a Minority Rule governance and elections system significantly rooted in the imperatives of 18th Century slaveowners.
+8. In the (not at all exceptionally democratic or free) USA no less than in other countries past and present, the underlying capitalist-imperialist system is the seedbed, the societal basis, for fascism/neo-fascism, along with other oppression systems upon which contemporary class rule relies — racism, nativism, patriarchy, nationalism, and imperialism.
+9. As terrible as fascism is in in all its forms, times, and places, it is a symptom of a capitalist order that is quite capable of cancelling all prospects for a decent human future without cracking open the outer superstructural shell of democracy atop the underlying bourgeois class dictatorship/mode of production. Even if bourgeois electoral and rule of law democracy can stay intact to some significant degree in the US, the profits regime and its Siamese twin modern imperialism will bring humanity to the very edge of extinction through environmental disaster, nuclear war, and pandemicide.
+10. American “democracy” is a badly failed endeavor no matter how the election turns out. The fact that Adolf Trump is on a major party US presidential ballot with a real shot at returning to power and not behind bars is profoundly damning and something for which the Democrats must never be forgiven. The presentation of the noxious horse race between ruling class Fascist Trump and ruling class Killer Kamala as a meaningful “democratic choice” and as the full spectrum of acceptable political contention in the world’s most powerful and dangerous nation is a grave insult – a massive “Fuck You!” – and a lethal menace to humanity. It is much to be hoped that the steep, almost pre-Civil War “red v. blue” divisions within and between elites and masses starkly evident right now betokens conflicts that can create a context in which new radical and socialist forces can advance a re-polarization from red against blue to the people against not just the ruling class but the capitalist system on which that ruling class’s wealth and power rests.
(CounterPunch.org)
Science story for today: Have you ever had a disagreement with someone about whether a color is blue or green? It turns out that the ability to discern the difference between hues of green and blue is highly individual. The Guardian reports (https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/sep/16/blue-green-viral-test-color-perception) on a neuroscientist who has devised an online test (https://ismy.blue) that in a few moments can score where your blue/green perception line falls.
I did the ismy.blue test a couple of weeks ago and it showed that my tendency is to think of most of the scale people call blue-to-green as green (to me, turquoise is green). But, go back, remember the newspaper children’s-pages puzzles they used to have, where the object was to spot the differences between two seemingly identical drawings? The method I invented back then was to cross my eyes to make three images, focus on the middle one, the overlapped one, to make the differences shimmer, so easily find and count them. A couple of days ago I saw a web magazine article where the art at the top was two identical images except one had a blue background and the other had a yellow background. I crossed my eyes, focused on the middle of the resulting three, and the background was not shimmery green as I guessed it would be, but solid blue; so I can see all the colors fine with both eyes, but my brain relies on my left eye to decide what color anomalies or misfires are. Just now, reminded by your message, Bob, I went back to ismy.blue and took the test twice, first time closing my right eye, next time closing my left eye. My left eye tests in the exact middle of the scale, relative to other people’s eyes. My right eye tests nearly all the way on the blue end of the scale (turquoise is green). So my /not/ normal eye is the one that my brain relies on for color sense. You try that, now, one eye at a time. See what you get. Then, here’s a page of spot-the-differences drawings: https://www.rd.com/list/spot-the-difference/ I see that the crossed-eye method still works great for me. Details are equally good in both eyes and differences shimmer. It’s just on colors where one eye wins. This really interests me. I wonder if this relates in any way, in the brain, to handedness (left hand, left eye, both involve the right-brain; but I’m not particularly right or left-handed; I do some things right-handed (guitar, throw, scissors, bat) and some left-handed (write, fork, phone) but most things with whichever hand is nearer, reaching for the tool). Or it might be that one of my eyes (right one) is developing a cataract faster than the other one, and my brain puts what that one says about color in the co-pilot seat.
Fascinating observations, Marco. I repeated the test with my left and right eye and got roughly the same results (169 vs. 170). Human vision uses three types of color receptors (blue, green, and red cones) as well as monochrome rods. Each of these receptors has a response curve that peaks at a different wavelength. Our visual apparatus (retina, optic nerve, visual cortex) combines the output of these receptors to produce an illusion of color. The response curves for the cones vary among individuals, you may have a bonus difference between your eyes.
Color reproduction on the screen is carried out by additive mixing of blue, green, and red light from discreet pixels of those colors. This tricks our visual apparatus into seeing a spectrum of colors while only the three primary colors are present on the screen. Likewise, print reproduction of color uses a similar method by subtractive combination cyan, yellow, and magenta ink on the page to trick the eye into seeing a full color image.
It is my understanding that both Japanese and Vietnamese cultures make no distinction between blue and green.
There is strong linguistic evidence that most ancient cultures did not differentiate between blue and green. This does not mean that any particular group of homo sapiens lacks blue or green cones, but instead points to the power of culture in shaping our perception of the physical world.
I agree with Bob, the color in the brain part of learning not what the nerve sends.
I have read that the human eye is sensitive to green was because vigorous green growth leads to food, either immediately or as fruit or seeds later.
David Samuels and the political cartoon are spot on….
P.S. I agree with Kurt Vonnegut: semicolons are for assh@ts
Ed Notes inspired some noggin
Thems peoples who’s moving out here from ways out yonder is bringing their ‘critters’ with ’em, too..
Happy🍂 Fall, y’all
Re Dick Selzers’ meeting with Sage and Doug.
The tax sharing agreement benefits the City of Ukiah more than the County although it is more generous than is usual with these agreements. It shifts a lot of power and tax revenue to the COU with no commitment for the COU to support County services outside of its sphere of influence.
Will it be a benefit to County citizens? That remains to be seen but not likely.
For those that live in Ukiah, areas that will soon be Ukiah, or are in the sphere of influence will likely benefit if city government is well managed.
Regardless of the governing body, local citizens need to stay involved and engaged to make sure government serves them rather than the other way around. Democracy is not a spectator sport. We can’t just sit on the sidelines watching and hoping for the best. We must be involved.
My concern is that the City will continue its policy for higher-density housing in the newly annexed areas. Many of our roads and streets are not designed to accommodate bumper to bumper parking on both sides of the street, in addition to adjusting to new neighbors living in the open spaces the previously separated our homes. As the City’s revenues increase, our quality of life will decrease.
Holy fucking shit,
Doug Holland just did something no editor, writer, or reader of this paper would ever attempt, in the name of journalistic exploration, when he acted out his fake homeless routine on the streets of Seattle a couple weeks ago.
What a guy, what a story, can we just change the name of this paper to “The Holland Gazette,” and be done with it? Conversely, the guy has nowhere to go but down after his “Bum Like Me” story of homeless tourism showed up in the pages of the AVA today.
Is the guy certifiable, or what? Yes he is a little touched, his own brand of “crazy,” and I have first-hand knowledge of this: I spent months last Winter and Spring nagging and begging the guy to retire and start taking his well earned Social Security, which he had paid into for thirty years. He had one bullshit excuse after another why he wouldn’t sign up, why he would rather work his shitty jobs that usually just lasted a few weeks, if not a few days.
At one point he said he wouldn’t sign up because he “didn’t want to be treated like a trained circus animal,” to which I replied, “Dude, you’re being a trained circus animal earning your keep with all those shitty office jobs you keep telling us all about!”
Finally I told him, “Just do it for ME, I need a win,” and after other friends also tried to reason with him he finally entered glorious retirement, gets his checks, and is now sleeping in the weeds with hundreds of bugs finding refuge in his famous folds of fat. (I met him a year ago, he’s really not that fat…)
So what will he do next? Frankly, in my book he can ride this one into the sunset, unless any of us readers have a new challenge for him for his homemade “reality shows.” (I want him to visit a massage parlor and give us a report, but Mr Holland is as squeaky clean as the editor of this paper, and has never paid for it.)
Now that he’s retired and sucking on the govt teat (like an untrained circus animal) his social activity is limited, he has less to write about in his blog, with his limited gallivanting around town, and so I will be shocked and amazed if he can come up with anything approaching this latest antic.
As for me, I now feel small, very small, scribbling in my notebooks, yet I am too soft to follow his lead into the bushes of gonzo journalism, like the rest of us.
All Hail Doug Holland! (Hunter S Thompson gives a thumbs up.)
Paul Modic
Dude, all I did was visit the library and camp out for a night.
You planned it out like an assassin…
“Not a single vet was spat upon”
Correct. Anyone saying otherwise is simply lying.
For my generation, a hippie was the guy who asked you for a light for their joint but then didn’t offer you a hit. Of course, these were echo hippies (who the heck was taking acid and surfing Dead concerts in 1985 ffs?), not the originals. Isn’t it funny how the government hippies hate weed and love grapes and timber?
Reminder: The recreational cannabis referendum was written by billionaire Sean Parker, who started working for the CIA when he was 16. (As always, look it up if you don’t believe me.) I’ve been to all the weed capitals in the world including Amsterdam and Jamaica. Everyone in those places knows where the best in the world used to come from. The fact that the County screwed local growers instead of celebrating them is not an accident.
J.D. Thompson asks “What is happening to the morality of Homo Sapiens?” Perhaps because we’re the only species that allows ourselves to be ruled by a lesser species – the subhumans – who are elected, appointed, feted, celebrated, and defended. They can pull off a major terrorist attack that murders children and medical personnel, and a large number of the idiots around proclaim “Wow! That was like a Tom Clancy novel!” or “I’m not a fan of Israel, but wow you really gotta hand it to ’em”. Utterly disgusting tripe from mind controlled troglodytes.
It makes not one iota of difference – on anything that matters – who is selected to represent you by bombing children for the next four years. Sure, dumb American domestic issues, reproductive freedom, homelessness, the ongoing feudalization of society, the upward whoosh of anything of value, might go one way or another depending on if you vote from Criminal Piece of Crap A vs Criminal Piece of Crap B, but on issues that actually matter – the lives of Palestinians – it makes no difference whatsoever. Americans don’t deserve prosperity, freedo, or anything else. America is a criminal terrorist nation in which more than 150million people voted pro-war and pro-genocide in 2020, just like the Germans voted in majority for the NSDAP and DNVP. The Germans got what they deserved for voting like filthy criminals.